For many decades, Dorothea "Dotti" Lipetz created art in a studio spread over several rooms in her Upper Arlington split-level.

Now some of her tools and supplies will be used by students at the Columbus College of Art & Design.

After Lipetz died in February at 94, her three sons decided that she would have wanted young people to use the art supplies she'd left behind.

So her youngest son, Bob, called the Department of Development Advancement at CCAD.

This month, Professor Kathy McGhee, who teaches printmaking, and Brittany Campbell, program liaison for the Fine Arts Department, drove to Lipetz’s house and packed their cars with boxes of materials, much of it used for printmaking.

"She was a great printmaker," said Barbara Vogel, a Columbus artist who works in photo encaustics and who worked at the now-closed Lanning Gallery in the Short North, where Lipetz had two exhibits.

Some of Lipetz's prints found their way into limited-edition art books. The tools she used to make these and other pieces — gouges for cutting wood, chisels, sharpening stones, and “a beautiful assortment of brayers” for rolling paint," McGhee said — are now in the print lab at CCAD, along with an ample supply of high-quality paper, blotters for prints, and wood for carving.

McGhee has been carefully sharpening the gouges and other implements.

“The students are going to be thrilled,” she said.

Gouges and other printmaking equipment can be expensive, and many of the college's 1,200 students arrive on a strict budget and with little equipment of their own.

Even a homely can of ink-stained wooden spoons of various sizes and shapes has hidden value. A brayer applied to paper distributes the ink on a block evenly onto paper, but pressure applied by a spoon allows more control, allowing darker ink in some spots and lighter elsewhere.

Some of Lipetz's other supplies — such as colorful plexiglass, acrylics and watercolors — can be found at the Amelita Mirolo Fine Arts Building, where Campbell is setting up a supply-exchange room.

The room, to be run by fine-arts student Margaret Kammerer, will be stocked with art supplies. A few times a week during the semester, students and professors will be able to trade supplies they no longer need for ones they do.

Campbell came up with the idea for the room while cleaning out classrooms after spring semester and found many supplies left behind by students who didn’t want to, say, fly home with half-used tubes of paint.

“I’m a big environmentalist,” she said. “I hate to see waste piling up in a landfill. And art schools can be some of the worst for waste.”

The materials among Lipetz’s donations that aren’t specifically for printmaking will build up the stock in the exchange room.

Other donations, too, will go there.

Ashley Waltermeyer, director of development advancement at CCAD, receives regular phone calls about potential donations. The college can’t accept gifts of art because it doesn’t have anyone on staff to care for pieces, but supplies are often welcome.

“We’re always glad to have a conversation about a possible donation,” Waltermeyer said.

Lipetz, her son Bob thinks, would have been happy to see her supplies used to help students.

"She was always interested in empowering the young, particularly girls," he said.

Throughout her career, Lipetz was involved not just in her own work but in helping students.

Columbus artist Lindsey Alexander, who creates ceramic mosaics, took watercolor classes from Lipetz in the 1980s at the Jewish Community Center.

They were "my first introduction to painting and making art,” said Alexander, who said she kept in touch with Lipetz through the years.

“Dotti was so curious, and she took such joy in opening up ideas for us. I thought the world of her. As a teacher, she gave me the confidence to experiment and grow.”

Lipetz's donated supplies and tools clearly fill a practical need, but Campbell said they also serve as quiet inspiration.

“You can see which ones were her favorites — the ones that have been sharpened and resharpened,” she said as she picked up and examined some of the gouges.

“You can almost feel the history in the tools.”

margaretquamme@hotmail.com

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